it has been brought to our attention that you might get a mention of Inaya and Soan in the text of Chapter 3 while they have already left the group.
We just released a small patch to correct this issue.
Thank you again and kind regards,
Geoffroy, on behalf of the team.
End of Lines v.1.0.2
Dear friends,
first of all, thank you for following us during the launch of End of Lines! Your reception of the game has been very heartwarming to us.
We corrected a batch of small issues, namely: - Fixed a duplicate sentence in the "Panther / Forest" epilogue, - Fixed an issue where the "Happy Event" achievement wasn't unlocking correctly on Steam, - Fixed a wrongly attributed dialog in Chapter 2, - Fixed a branching issue where the player could be shown the wrong variant of the "panther" epilogue.
Don't hesitate to get in touch if you find anything amiss during your playthroughs, we'll keep updating the game as needed.
Thank you again and kind regards,
Geoffroy, on behalf of the team.
P.S.: did you know that Sam can pet the dog in End of Lines?
End of Lines is available now!
Dear friends,
we're very proud to finally be able finally to share our new interactive graphic novel, End of Lines, with you!
Embark now on a journey across the devastated landscapes of a post climate change Southern Europe with Camille, Nora, Sam, Rafik, and the people they'll meet on the trail!
We really hope this game will resonate with you and we can't wait to read your thoughts it in the review section!
Cheers,
Geoffroy, on behalf of the team.
Newsletter #28 — May 2022
Hello everyone!
It's official, after three years in the making, we're finally ready to release our next interactive graphic novel, End of Lines.
Continue reading for an abundance of details.
Coming Thursday, May 25th
Mark your calendars: End of Lines will be available worldwide on PC/Mac/Linux via Steam and a selection of trustworthy online retailers across the Internet on Thursday, May 25th.
In this new interactive graphic novel, you'll be following a family trying to survive in a post climate meltdown Europe. To achieve that, you'll have to manage their resources and the people who travel alongside them, while, of course, making choices that will shape their journey across the continent.
In other words, we decided to explore one of the possible outcomes of an important contemporary issue in this game. Perhaps the greatest challenge of our time.
We really hope it will resonate with you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_FP8IPv9hs
Of course. we have scheduled a release discount over on the Steam Store (If you haven't done so already, please be kind enough to add End of Lines to your wishlist — it really helps with discovery algorithms and will let you know when the game is out).
And for those who are wondering, well yes: the original soundtrack, which consists of nearly 2 hours of instrumental music and ambient sounds from the game, masterfully crafted by our friends Julien and Camille from Illustrason will be available as a DLC on Steam, as a downloadable album on Bandcamp, and on streaming platforms such as Spotify or Deezer.
Release party at la Librairie du Basilic in Bordeaux
The team will be at the Librairie du Basilic on Saturday, June 3rd from 2PM to 4PM (and possibly later). You'll be able to test the game, and meet and greet us. We're also planning a couple of surprises for the afternoon.
The Librarie du Basilic is a very nice place, specialized in speculative fiction and fantasy literature, with a great selection of books and lovely people who will happily point you towards your next favorite author.
And if you are itching to pay them a visit before the party, note that they've set up a demo of Seers Isle in the store. They also have some Steam keys for this game to sell from a limited run of beautiful ex libris we made back in 2018.
The address: Librairie du Basilic — 20 rue du Mirail, 33000 Bordeaux
What have we been up to?
Once again, I have to apologize for the lack of news these last few months, but as you may imagine, finishing the game has been quite a hectic endeavor for everyone involved, to say the least.
Still a lot to do before we cross the finishing line, but we're definitely seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at last.
As always, let's conclude with this month's new illustration, the last you'll get for End of Lines. Soon, we'll be switching gears and we can't wait to tease you about our upcoming interactive graphic novels.
That’s all for now, and we hope we'll see you on release day!
Please consider adding End of Lines to your wishlist if you haven't done so yet!
If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup
You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
http://twitter.com/novabox
http://facebook.com/novabox.studio
https://instagram.com/novabox
Best,
Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.
Release Date Reveal
Dear friends,
We're so excited and proud to announce that End of Lines, our next interactive graphic novel, is finally launching on May 25th! 😃
Please check out our brand-new trailer below.
We can't wait to finally share the result of these last three years of work with you all! Don't hesitate to spread the word and please add the game to your wishlist.
See you at launch!
Cheers,
Geoffroy, on behalf of the team.
Newsletter #27 — December 2022
Hello everyone!
First of all, we would like extend our best holiday wishes to all of you, dear readers.
In this month's issue, we're talking about the awards received at Indie X, our ongoing winter sale and the price adjustments that are coming up early next year.
As always, we'll finish with an update on End of Lines production, along with a new illustration from the game, so keep on scrolling!
End of Lines won an award at Indie X 2022!
So, last month, we had the chance to take part in Indie X, the biggest indie games festival in Portugal, where End of Lines received a nomination for "Best Art Direction" and won the award for "Games for Good". We're very proud to have received both those distinctions.
And if you missed it, our IndieX livestream is available for replay on Youtube, where we go in depth into the artistic statement and game development of End of Lines. Big thanks to Patricia Casaca who was a wonderful host!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWaHn6uI3RA
Price adjustments are coming in January
Let's do the classic "I have good news and bad news" routine, shall we?
Let's get the "bad" news out of the way first: Steam adjusted the recommended prices conversion earlier this year, and we haven't applied them on our catalogue yet, but we're planning on doing it early next year, once the current Winter Sale ends. That means that the prices of our games will go up in certain regions.
Also, as you may have noticed, two-digits inflation has made a nasty comeback in Europe. That means each sale we make returns less value than it did in the past. To give you an example, if we only needed to sell six copies of Across the Grooves to pay for a kebab for each member of our team in the past (these are not real-life numbers, just an example), we will now need to sell seven or even eight copies of the game for same number of kebabs, because the price of kebabs went up with inflation, while the price of our games did not (yet).
That's why we're also planning on updating the base price of our games from 12.99€/$ to 13.99€/$ on Steam and other resellers.
We know that this may seem like a very peculiar decision, but we really hope you'll understand why we're trying to approach things differently.
Winter Sales
I can hear you asking me "okay, we get it" (and we really hope you do), "but what's the good news, then?"
Well, the good news is that we're making our the biggest discount to date on our full back catalogue, with 35% off on all our titles. So if you're on the fence about diving into a Nova-box game, now would be a great time to do so.
On top of that, you can get an extra 10% off with our permanent "complete your collection" bundle on Steam. Follow the nifty link here below, it will point you in the right direction:
So, to sum it up:
— the base price of our games will go up 1€/$ next month to counter inflation,
… but:
— we're currently running our biggest sale to date, with 35% off across the catalogue.
What have we been up to?
We're currently in the midst of our "friends & family" closed beta, and the first waves of feedback we've received are quite encouraging. We're very grateful to our testers for their time. Thanks to them we will have a lot of adjustments and improvements to implement into the game next month, once the beta session is concluded.
On the art side, Nico and Julie are still upgrading all the illustrations from placeholders to finished art pieces, and they will be doing that for the next couple of months, since there's a lot of images to behold in End of Lines (we've passed the 1000 visual assets for the first time, and by a good margin). All in all, we're still on track for an early-ish 2023 release, and we'll keep you posted once we know more, of course.
That’s all for now, see you next month!
Please consider adding End of Lines to your wishlist if you haven't done so yet!
If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup
You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
http://twitter.com/novabox
http://facebook.com/novabox.studio
https://instagram.com/novabox
Best,
Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.
End of Lines demo closes on December, 19th
Dear Steam friends,
just a quick announcement to forewarn you we'll be retiring End of Lines demo on Monday, December 19th.
If you haven't played it yet, now would be the time to do so.
We would like to thank everyone who downloaded and enjoyed the demo, and we hope we will see you at launch!
We encourage you to add the game to your wishlist to stay in the loop:
This demo covers the first chapter of the story. Get acquainted with the cast and start a journey across a post-climate meltdown Southern Europe in search of a place to settle.
What's changed : — Several bug fixes, optimizations, and small tweaks to the story and the art, — A completely new soundtrack: the music team completed the final recordings with live musicians, and you can now enjoy the music in its release worthy state, in hi-fidelity.
The demo will be available to play until November 15th 2022, so don't miss out of your chance to try the first chapter of our upcoming interactive graphic novel!
And as always, if you haven't done so already, we encourage you to add End of Lines to your wishlist.
This month, we're talking about the Indie X festival and the new demo for End of Lines that you can try out on Steam.
Have a look below for the details on the new demo, as well as a look at new art from the game.
Indie X Online Festival 2022
We're very happy to take part in the Indie X Festival this year!
End of Lines was selected in the top 50 finalists out of more 500 entries, which is quite an achievement.
We won't attend the physical festival in Lisbon, however, we'll be part of the online part of the festival with a special Q&A live stream on November 7th at 2PM CET.
We'll relay the news on our social channels so please keep your eyes peeled. In the mean time, you can go and visit the Indie X Online festival website, lots of great games are attending!
Also, the festival comes with a special event on Steam. To celebrate, we decided to update our demo and to make it public for the duration of the festival, starting right now!
Try End of Lines updated demo on Steam now
To properly celebrate our participation in the Indie X festival, the demo of our upcoming interactive novel End of Lines will be available on Steam starting right now until November 15th.
The demo showcases the first chapter of the game. We made several tweaks to the art and to the story, but the most striking upgrade is the music and sound design which went through final recordings with live musicians since our last demo during June's Steam Next Fest.
Since our last issue, we made a lot of progress on End of Lines and crossed a big milestone: the game is now playable in its entirety from start to finish in all variations of the story. We still have some adjustments to make on the texts and the scripts, but we're quickly approaching the "beta" state, to the joy of the team.
On the art side, Nico and Julie are now busy on upgrading all the illustrations from placeholder images to release-ready art. We also had the joy to welcome a new art intern last week: Liannesoa Farge, who will be with us until the end of the year. You can check out her portfolio on Artstation.
That’s all for now, see you next month!
Please consider adding End of Lines to your wishlist if you haven't done so yet!
If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup
You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
http://twitter.com/novabox
http://facebook.com/novabox.studio
https://instagram.com/novabox
Best,
Geoffroy,
on behalf of the team.
Newsletter #25 — September 2022
Hello everyone!
Looks like summer's come and gone in a heartbeat! In this month's issue, we'll talk about End of Lines (and its lateness) and the upcoming events we'll be attending.
End of Lines is late (again)
Let's get the the bad news out the way first: as we were telling you last time, we've accumulated a fair amount of lateness. Unfortunately, it means that we may not find a release frame for 2022.
As you might know, releasing a small indie game is quite akin to crossing the Strait of Gibraltar on a small sailboat. You have to navigate around big tankers and other large boats while being extra careful not to be crushed by the mastodons surrounding you.
Since we're quickly approaching the holiday season, it might not be advisable to release our tiny and delicate vessel of a game with all the AAA titles that usually get the attention of everyone at this time of the year, so we'll take advantage of this extra time to polish End of Lines further.
We're still considering our options, but the most likely scenario is that we're going to aim for a February or March 2023 release spot, to give the End of Lines its best chance to get some attention from the press, the influencers, and most and foremost the players.
We really hope you won't be too disappointed if you've been waiting for our next game, and we, as a team, would like to extend our apologies for that state of affairs. On the other hand, we're really excited to be able to devote this extra time to make the best game we can, and hope you will enjoy it once we eventually release it. In any case, we'll keep you posted about any further development.
Events around Bordeaux this Fall
Mark your calendars! If you're in the Bordeaux area on the weekend of September 24/25th, you will be able to test End of Lines on the second edition of the Hypermondes Festival at the Multimedia Library of Mérignac. It is a free Sci-Fi convention and we warmly recommend you to check it out.
I (Geoffroy) will also have the honor to participate on a panel about video games and utopia during the event (on Sunday, 09/25 at 11:50 AM).
All relevant information is available over there, on the event's website:
http://hypermondes.fr/
Geoffroy (left) and Nico (right) showing End of Lines during the Union St. Jean playtest in June.
Later in the month, Nico and I will also be present at the GameConf in Angoulême, where I'll participate in a panel about self-funding. If you're an attending member of the industry, don't hesitate to say hi to us, and if you're not, chances are the recording of my panel will be made available after the event. If that's the case, I'll give you the link in a future issue of this newsletter.
What have we been up to?
As you might guess, we've been hard at work on End of Lines all summer, and we've made tremendous progress. The French text is complete, English localization is almost done. We can already tell you that End of Lines will be the longest game in our catalogue, text-wise: almost twice the size of Seers Isle and a good quarter longer than Across the Grooves.
On the Art side, the storyboard is almost complete and we should officially be in the "beta" phase at the end of the month. Still a lot to do, but we're finally beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel!
If you're wondering what our storyboards look like, here's a sample here below:
That’s all for now, see you next month!
Please consider adding End of Lines to your wishlist if you haven't done so yet!
If you want to subscribe to our mailing list, you can register here:
http://www.nova-box.com/signup
You'll get extra-fresh updates about our projects and our whereabouts once a month, nestled in the coziness of your own inbox (we'll never send spam, and you can unsubscribe anytime).
And if you want to hear from us more often, you can also follow us on social networks:
http://twitter.com/novabox
http://facebook.com/novabox.studio
https://instagram.com/novabox
